Introduction
There are a variety of ways in which one can exercise power. The most common means that have been employed were to force subjects into submission by causing pain or an uncomfortable situation that the subject would not bear. The exercise of power involves two parties.
The inferior who is always forced into submission and the superior who causes the power enforcement. This trend in exercising power has been a character of most countries that colonize others. However, this is not an absolute solution in itself. The question of race brings a clearer picture of this situation.
There exists a division in the human beings that suggests that some races are superior to others. The means with which one administers influence over another varies with the environment involved in that situation. However, whoever wins in the power game practices dominion over the subdued, thus changing every aspect of the victim’s life.
Historically, this has been a way with which identities of a people have been completely lost or given a new course because one person may perceive another one’s practice as inferior. The inferiority mind that one creates over another is intended bring change.
To a great extend, as the world realizes more civilization, even the people long thought to be inferior gains some insights in knowledge and the result is that they question the power and leadership of the superior man. This is the root of colonialism. Man has tried to solve the paradox of power enforcement since time immemorial.
Through generations, kings rose against one another ending into unaccountable damages. This was the physical means of perpetuating power. To the contrary, was it the reason the many countries and people failed to bring forth the question of decolonization even after the departure of the colonist?
Blackness and Power
Racism. This is the outcry one race. But is racism relative in the current world. Why is mentioned anyway if truly it exists, how is it exercised among people? This has been the biggest question if not a puzzle to answer. A black man is passing and young white kid is busy pestering its mother of the presence of the black man. In an oversight, the black man realizes an aura existing and decides to act rebelliously.
The irony here is that once upon a time, the white kid’s ancestors ruled over the black man with an iron fist. In the face of scorn, this man has nothing to do with his situation; indeed there is a power flow from the white kid to the black adult, with no weapon or brutality involved physically. The assault the kid causes has remarkable implications.
The psychological affliction that is left on the mind of the black man leaves them asking questions if they are savages or the outcasts of the society. Nevertheless, if the power that transpires between a black and white man draws such feelings, why then do we sometimes have a black man with some status in society exercise the same against fellow blacks.
Initially the family fabric among blacks cherished brotherhood; no one person was supposed to belittle another. As a result there is agreement that oppression of a black man by a black man is anti-black mannerism. If the mannerism that one black man exercises over another is not the norm of the African society, what then could be the source of the oppression?
The answer to the above lies in the quest of colonialism. This is an aped character which is a result of colonialism. Although, differences may exist between two Africans, they are both inferior in the eyes of a white man.
Drawing from the example of an elite African and his friend, which one among them exercises without physical involvement another? The answer is none among the two! Therefore, who actually is credited with that power? It is the white man? He rules through causing the two to stratify societies causing inferior groups among “the inferior”.
It has been long since slavery was abolished. But in day to day speech, the word still escapes the lips of a few. However, the context in which it is applied does not reflect the cotton plantations of the 19th century America. By way of example, who taught a black man that his color is undesirable?
Is it not his struggle to look like a white man that makes him think that he has a bad color? Doesn’t this result to justification of a conclusion that a black man is a modern day slave in his own “color plantation”, after the real slave world in the cotton plantations.
Thus the idea of slavery is still being exercised today not in slave ships but silently in the mind of the black, without the physical abuse that was commonly associated to slaves. In fact the power of it today is more brutal to the black man than the physical brutality that the ancestors of the black man encountered (Fanon 17-41).
Language and Superiority.
A language helps people to communicate. It does not matter it the language is native or foreign. To a large extent, language is an expression of culture solidity. Sometime we say that the power of a language is an expression of a longing of one person to adopt a cultural modification.
Examples are borrowed from the languages spoken by the former colonies of the European nations where most the languages called “national languages” are not natives. Because of the influence of the owner in a language power is exercised. The trick employed by most people is cause someone to speak your language and you can manipulate them the way you desire them to.
Power of language here has been used figuratively to mean the owner of making someone act the way your own way. The figure in the language as employed means many aspects. One of the aspects is that one creates an inferiority state in another so that looking at his/ her own culture, what he sees is not only despondency but also hatred.
Some people leave their native countries and travel abroad particularly to their former colonies for studies or special trainings in various fields. After spending some time in those foreign lands they would come back with pretence that they have forgotten their native languages and adopted the foreign one.
The dialect completely changes and assumes no trace of the local language as was spoken before departure. Because someone thinks that he has acquired and mastered it, presumes equality to a superior race which he doesn’t belong to. One thing that is forgotten by the victims of this is that they lose identity.
They are tone between acting native and foreign. Since they want to please even the real speakers of the language, sacrifices are made such that the native will lose his identity and adopt the identity of a superior race.
On the other hand, blacks have long been seen as uncivilized communities. Their intelligence has been questioned for many centuries. Their ways have been equated pre-historic forest dwellers that are at the moment slightly above the primates. How can they therefore, disapprove the Whiteman that they can also learn and even learn better than the superior race?
Knowing that they cannot exercise real physical power over the whites, they would rather use their language skills to equate themselves to the whites just to create a fair tension in power without any violence or weapons involvement. That is how the black man fights the white man. He gets satisfied by exercising his power by the use of a language well mastered (Fanon 108-141).
Trading of a basic need for power
One way of handling colonization is by defying its systems and institutions. But what do we decolonize people from? Colonization in the early days was characterized with brutality. Today, colonization is taking place insipiently and with more repercussions than it was even realized.
Having seen the threat and challenge, the colonist still wants to dominate the scene. The person who was thought was inferior has finally adopted the culture imposed on him and at the moment is a potential competitor to the colonist. The colonist faces, two challenges.
In the first, place he has to dominate but not violently. But he realizes one weakness in the colonized; he doesn’t have necessary technology, he still clings to cultural practices. He devices a way to perpetuate his dominance by raising one of their own in order to rule.
The colonist hides in the colonized elite to rule against his people but using the ideas of the colonist. Hence no force is used but the colonist still rule. At this stage propaganda is the main tool used (Foucault 258-273).
Alternative lawfulness
Punishment application has been mostly used to correct criminals. The study has proved otherwise that alternative treatment of the body can yield a corrective result not necessarily by employment of creation of a harsh environment. A human body is thought to exist in two parts; the physical and tangible body, which for a long time has been thought when subjected to harsh treatment, produces a result.
The second of the human body is the soul. The soul in this context is the intangible being which is determined by the environment that a person is in. thorough study has shown that it is rather healthy to cause a change to the to the soul part of the human body than physically abusing the physical body.
This is done by the employment of the fact that through subjecting the physical body to a series of trainings, the soul part becomes accustomed to some knowledge change. If for instance a criminal is just confined behind bars without contact to the outside world, science has shown that it produces more corrective means than subjection of a person to physical abuse.
Examples for this part are hardcore criminals coming into being when subjected to harsh prison environments. These people come out more dangerous than they entered. An alternative means is to cause change through imparting some knew knowledge insights in (creating a new soul) in someone like an inmate.
Teach them something productive while they are confined and they will come out changed people than treating them harshly, only create a dangerous person (Fanon 109-141).
Conclusion
Practice and enforcement of power in the modern information age has taken a new dimension. This owes its success to the application of new thoughts into the being of a human.
As such methods grow in popularity, we move away from the industrial age notions of exercising power through physical punishment of the body. Just have a desire to modify someone’s traditions or customs through incentives so that they cannot even realize that you exist. Let your power move unnoticed and with time change will take its natural course.
Works Cited
Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White masks. 2008. June 30, 2011
Fanon, Frantz. The Wretches of the Earth. 2008. June 30, 2011
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: right over death, 2008. June 30, 2011.